Trump to Meet With Putin at G-20 Gathering Next Week

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President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany.CreditLeft, Doug Mills/The New York Times; right; Pool photo by Sergei Karpukhin

WASHINGTON — President Trump will meet next week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the White House national security adviser said on Thursday, announcing highly anticipated talks amid escalating tensions over Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and a series of inquiries into whether Mr. Trump’s associates colluded with Russia.

The White House would not say whether Mr. Trump plans to press Mr. Putin on the issue of Russia’s meddling in last year’s election — a topic the president has avoided talking about despite deep concern inside his own administration and on Capitol Hill.

The meeting, the first between the two since Mr. Trump took office, will occur on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, providing a dramatic focal point for Mr. Trump’s second international trip as he faces deep skepticism on the world stage.

“There’s no specific agenda — it’s really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about,” said Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the president’s national security adviser.

The encounter could have broad implications for American foreign policy. But it is also fraught with political overtones for Mr. Trump, who is under scrutiny about his willingness to be tough on Moscow after a campaign in which he praised Mr. Putin effusively and exhorted Russia — in what his aides now call a joke — to hack into Hillary Clinton’s email.

Congressional committees and a special counsel are digging more deeply into possible ties between the president’s campaign and Moscow. But Mr. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the unanimous conclusion of United States intelligence agencies that Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 race, often describing the assertion as a hoax perpetrated to undermine his presidency.

Yet even as the Trump administration has sought to develop friendlier ties with Russia, the relationship is under continued strain over Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and interference in Ukraine. It has also proved awkward for Mr. Trump amid recent revelations about the extent to which Mr. Putin personally directed cyberintrusions into the election.

General McMaster said the president had directed his team to devise ways of confronting “Russia’s destabilizing behavior,” whether through cyberthreats or political subversion in the United States or elsewhere, and to deter conflicts.

“Nobody wants a major-power war,” General McMaster told reporters. He also said Mr. Trump wants to try to identify potential areas of cooperation with Russia, be it on de-escalating the conflict in Syria, addressing the nuclear threat from North Korea or confronting transnational terrorist threats.

Beyond those general themes, Mr. Trump’s advisers have yet to devise a set of talking points for the closely watched meeting, a process made all the more difficult given the cloud of suspicion hanging over the president and his own propensity to go off-script.

It is rare and potentially risky for an American president to go into such a consequential meeting with another world leader — particularly one like Mr. Putin, a forceful and persuasive figure — with so little preparation on what policy objectives he wants to pursue, said Michael A. McFaul, who served as the United States ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama.

“Mr. Trump may not be preparing in terms of deliverables or outcomes that he seeks, but you can bet that Mr. Putin is,” said Mr. McFaul, who as the chief Russia specialist at the National Security Council in 2009 prepared Mr. Obama for his first meeting with then-President Dmitry A. Medvedev of Russia.

“The big danger with Trump and his instincts is that he often defines a ‘good meeting’ or a friendly encounter as a positive outcome of a meeting with a head of state, and with Putin — where we have a big agenda, and a lot of it’s adversarial — he’s got that backward,” Mr. McFaul said.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said it was crucial that the meeting be “more than a grip-and-grin,” particularly given Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to acknowledge Russia’s efforts to sway the election.

“I would hope — though I can’t say that I expect — the president to push back hard on Russia’s interference in our election, make it clear that that kind of meddling in our affairs will not be tolerated and we wont tolerate it elsewhere either,” Mr. Schiff said. “He needs to let Putin know in no uncertain terms that we aren’t going to stand for their continued occupation of Ukraine and their continued efforts to destabilize Ukraine.”

The session is riddled with potential land mines for Mr. Trump, who has yet to settle on a Russia policy and could find himself making pledges that collide with other priorities.

“There are lots of Russia issues, but there is not a Russian policy yet,” said Jeffrey Rathke, deputy director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There clearly are risks when you’ve got a foreign policy process as disorganized as it appears to be in this administration. There is a risk of making commitments in one field that could impinge on other interests that haven’t yet been fully discussed.”

Mr. McFaul said the meeting was a vital opportunity for Mr. Trump to show strength by calling out Mr. Putin sharply for the election meddling and to make it clear he is not fooled by Moscow’s misbehavior.

“There is a sense in Moscow that Trump is kind of naïve about these things and just doesn’t understand,” he said. “You don’t want your first meeting with Putin to create the appearance that you’re weak and naïve, and with some short, direct talking points, he could correct the record.”